The Sapper — Bharat Sikka. Published by Fw: Books.
Straight portrait photography, mixed with sculptural elements, with painting, with collage — I love all the photographic syntaxes mixing together in this very exciting book. What I love about this work is that it confounds me in a really beautiful way.
Does it help to know that the subject matter is the photographer’s father, or that he was an engineer in the Indian Army? Perhaps it does, but the images are so compelling, both in their own right and collectively, as fragments of a larger story or puzzle, that it feels unnecessary to the enjoyment of the book.
It’s really hard to make images the feel “fresh", or even to srting together new combinations of different types of pictures, especially in the oversaturated image world that we live in. It is great to have a reminder that, it is in fact, absolutely still a possibility.
Todd Hido (born in Kent, Ohio, 1968) wanders endlessly, taking lengthy road trips in search of imagery that connects with his own memories. Through his unique landscape process and signature color palette, Hido alludes to the quiet and mysterious side of suburban America — where uniform communities provide for a stable façade — implying the instability that often lies behind the walls. His photographs are in many private and public collections, including at the Getty, Whitney Museum of American Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Pier 24 Photography holds the archive of all of his published works. Hido has published more than a dozen books, including the award-winning monographs House Hunting (2001) and Excerpts from Silver Meadows (2013), as well as innovative B-Sides Box Sets, which function as companion pieces to his books. His Aperture titles include Todd Hido on Landscapes, Interiors, and the Nude (2014) and Intimate Distance: Twenty-Five Years of Photographs (2016). His latest book is Bright Black World (2018). His newest publication, The End Sends Advance Warning, was released in November. Hido is also a collector, and over the last twenty-five years has created one of the most notable photobook collections, which was featured in Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books (2019).